Phenomenological Ethnography in Sociology and Anthropology

Abstract

In this issue we present a variety of examples of recent and ongoing ethnographic research in which investigators are working self-consciously in dialogue with one or more traditions within the phenomenological movement in philosophy. Each article makes a contribution to a given substantive field. As a set they pose a range of issues: the variety and distinctiveness of phenomenologically influenced ethnography, the relationship between philosophy and empirical inquiry, the evolution of phenomenological influences in social research, and issues about convergence and segregation in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology. We comment briefly on the last. One historically emergent difference is the contrasting moral postures that author and reader take toward the subjects of study. Anthropological writings characteristically have illuminated native groundings for subjects’ perspectives, enhancing respect for local cultures by uncovering reasons that outsiders had not appreciated. Sociological ethnography began in a similar posture, but for over 40 years now, and especially in phenomenologically influenced works, ethnographies produced out of academic sociology departments have frequently been critical or at least agnostic about claims made by their subjects, and the suspension of belief has ranged from the political to the ontological. The anthropological articles in this issue restore credibility to native graphy